The judges in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminal case rejected on Monday a request by the prime minister for a ban on the publication of the film The Bibi Files, which is scheduled to air at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) late Monday night (Israel time).
The documentary, according to the TIFF website, includes “key information regarding the investigation” of the prime minister, including “never-before-seen leaked footage.”
Some of the footage is from police interrogations of the prime minister, his wife, Sarah, son Yair, friends and confidantes of the prime minister, and past members of his housekeeping staff, according to a Variety magazine report last week. According to the report, the interrogations occurred between 2016-2018 and were leaked to producer Alex Gibney in 2023.
The film was directed by Alexis Bloom, and producers included, among others, Bloom, Alex Gibney, and Israeli Channel 13 reporter Raviv Drucker.
The motion against the film was directed at the state and Drucker. Netanyahu’s lawyer, Adv. Amit Hadad, argued that the publication of the interrogations was illegal according to Israeli law, and the fact that they were being aired abroad did not affect Drucker’s legal obligation not to publish them, or at the very least to receive the court’s permission. Drucker was a “political opponent” of the prime minister and wished to “end the prime minister’s rule.”
Judge Oded Shaham
Judge Oded Shaham denied the request to immediately issue an order to block publication and ordered the state and Drucker to reply to the request by Wednesday.
Gibney was cited by Variety as saying of the documentation, “These recordings shed light on Netanyahu’s character in a way that is unprecedented and extraordinary.” He further claimed that the recordings indicate how Netanyahu’s character “led us to where we are at right now.”
Bloom said of the film, “Netanyahu’s character comes through very strongly in the recordings,” adding, “This is a very human look at the people in the news headlines.”